"Yeah," says the mayor in answer to that question. "There's a lot of people who agree and don't agree, but if (Stevens) is willing to volunteer his time and sit on the board, he's welcome."

That may come as a surprise to at least one interested party -- attorney William G. Crawford, who has a contract to serve the housing authority board at a rate $225 per hour. In an email he sent Wednesday, Crawford told Stevens, "You are so obsessed over whether I am going to sue you, you can hardly sleep at night."

Responding to a note in which Stevens predicted he would be appointed to the housing board, Crawford wrote, "I can't believe a serious public official would appoint you to anything, especially given what you have written about the Mayor and the Commission."

I asked Stevens whether he could work with Crawford. "Sure," he said. But the activist has become wary of Crawford and what he calls a "cabal" of housing authority officials who are part of the agency's problem. "Why are they taking such an adversarial tone with me?" he asks. "Why am I the bad guy? I made some allegations -- and Crawford calls me 'nasty and vile'?"

That phrase came from another email exchange between the two.

As for the reforms to the agency that Stevens would pursue? "As I understand it, the procurement process was questionable, if not downright illegal," he says, citing conflicts of interest in at least two contracts, one to Best-Tec Abatement and one to Ridge Construction.

Mayor Noland says that she's been frustrated by the lack of applicants to the housing authority board -- she would also like to appoint two alternate board members, too. She asked that I make a pitch to Juice readers in hopes that she'll get plenty of applications to choose from.

This being Deerfield Beach, don't discount a surge in applications from the droves of enemies that Stevens has made during his scorched-earth blogging campaign. I asked Stevens if he's nervous that the mayor will pass him over.

"She needs help; I offered," he said. "She needs to put aside her personal or political feelings about me and realize I'm out to do what's best for Deerfield Beach."